Have a question about radio or wireless communication?  Ask me!

Thanks I would really like to see what you had in terms of battery powered valve designs like this

http://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/sputnik_9v_superheterodyne_tube_radio.html

I think the battery ones may be interesting to folk who have avoided  the old valve stuff for fear of been Zapped !!

HI john,

this post is for wireless and radio queations.  If you have a radio question for me I will answer it.  I do not know much about battery powered valves.

please repost in a different section of element 14.

Hi John,

Nice find.

(Maybe we need to request F&S to move a bit of this thread since we digressed a tiny bit) - but the battery powered valve designs are very interesting, something running from a couple of 6V or 9V batteries would be a fun thing for someone to prototype, as a modern take on a valve radio.

Otherwise maybe much knowledge is lost as people forget how to use valves. They were a bit before my time, and I don't know much about them, but they are still interesting.

What would be cool would be to see even a simple low-voltage single-tube oscillator or an amplifier, i.e. to walk before running, just to get people familiarised with how the devices operate.

I can imagine there were some really impressive radio designs at the time to minimise parts count for example, e.g. the regenerative receivers, etc.

Hi Chris I see the thread moved a bit how ever we are obviously still on the Radio/Wireless theme.

I would say that all these I will answer on Topic X,Y,Z themes are prone to this as the RPI and Arduino are too.

Any way it may be time to open up a "retro-tronics" thread.

I believe that I have some supplies which can make a basic radio. As an aged hobbyist I just want to have fun and satisfy my curiosity.  My training as a physical chemist (graduated in the 1960s!) gave me a taste and respect for this wonderful field. I am impressed with the knowledge and support at this site. Thank you to all!

Hi Steve, there is great enjoyment creating radios, so I hope you have a lot of fun. For AM type radios, the ZN414 IC was very easy to get going as a TRF radio, and was often a first radio for beginners. It is not made any more, but I noticed on e-bay there are some other manufacturer 'equivalent' ICs like MK484 and TA7642 being mentioned and available. Possibly they may work just as well. I think I did try MK484 once and it worked fine. It doesn't need any critical components.

For FM, a very popular chip for hobbyists was the TDA7000 which again is obsolete, but is available from ebay. The circuits were not bad, reasonably simple, although eventually the channel drifted because there was no PLL. There are lots of FM receiver boards from (say) places like Sparkfun, they tend to be so integrated that very little is needed beyond the IC, so I suppose a lot of the fun disappears. They need to be controlled by a microcontroller using I2C, so it's no longer a purely analog design. For I2C controlled radios, I quite like the TEF6606 which is not bad quality (about the same as a car radio), better than the sparkfun ones probably, although slightly noisy compared to a home radio, and is also surface-mount whereas the old TDA7000 was available in the larger DIL package. For lots of fun with superhets, a popular chip is the NE602 or SA602, (it is pretty old though but still manufactured maybe), and a separate demodulator. So it would be a more larger circuit though.

There would probably be more fun in an analog controlled circuit rather than the I2C controlled ones, I think even an ZN414 type AM radio is a lot of fun, and there will be lots of information on it, since it was so popular.

HI Chris i have an old valve ham radio Yaesu 901 D on the Rectifier A unit Board PB-1708 it has blown 2 Diodes vo6b 600v 1A recitifier silicone diodes which apparently are no longer in production oks Well my searching on the net has come up with a comparison of a  NTE116NTE116 or a Multicomp-1N4005 My question is will either of these replacements be ok in circuit or do i keep trying to find the exact original parts Any help in this regard will be of help as i dont wish to smoke the old girl up lol thank-you in advance for any advise that you may be able to give me.yours truly IAN

Good morning Mr. Pinter!

I was idly spinning around in my chair last night looking at my many remote controlled gizmos and gobs, when I was suddenly struck by an idea for a new project to work on: a custom "universal" 2.4 GHz transceiver.  I want to be able to switch control from my quad-copter to my RC car and back using presets (I'm planning on using an arduino for this), but I don't know how to approach tuning signals for the transceiver.

Is there a way to "record" PPM signals from a 2.4 GHz controller so I can disguise my custom controller as the original?  I've seen it done for infrared signals, such as custom arduino universal remotes, but I haven't found any that work on 2.4 GHz channels.  The idea is to be able to program presets into my controller by having it record signals from the original controller.  Do you know of any software that can do this?  My problem is that I don't know what channels my RC devices work on.

Sincerely,

José Justiniano

Hello Jose,

Yes you can do It.  I have done it before myself.  Ofcourse you will need a Vector Signal Analyzer (VSA). You can pick you up for $150,000.  Sorry not available at Radio Shack.

I would suggest building a programable controller that you can enter seneral RC codes into manually.  Then you can switch from one toy to the next.

Hope this helps,

chris Pinter

www.pinterec.ca

Hello again Mr. Pinter!

Thank you for your quick response!  Yeah, the Vector may be a little out of my price range.  However, I've seen slightly more invasive ways to hack a radio receiver so the arduino can read PPM streams:

RCArduino: How To Read RC Receiver PPM Stream

In this case, arduino is integrated into the rc device itself for added functionality.  My goal is a little different: I want to integrate arduino into the controller, I could possibly program some complex maneuvers into the arduino to execute on command (quad-copter backflip for example).

Do you think something like this could be done with a transceiver?  Granted, it's not as magical as a 2.4GHz universal remote, but is there a way to gut existing controllers to find out their channels and PPM streams?  Or would I need to surgically remove the IC along with the transmitter and hook my arduino to the IC?  I'll have to stick with IR for the universal controller, but maybe I can still switch to known 2.4 devices.

Thanks for your insight!

José Justiniano